


Walking Far from Home: Hungry Brothers

by wilySubversionist



Series: Walking Far from Home [1]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-10
Updated: 2011-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-16 20:41:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/169125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilySubversionist/pseuds/wilySubversionist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They’re your friends, neighbors, but just don’t live where you do, because you’re always so lost and roaming."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking Far from Home: Hungry Brothers

**Author's Note:**

> _"i saw hungry brothers waiting with the radio on, the radio on"_

It's all around you, streetlights and the haze of the city. The orange glow that replaces the sun every night pushes in past the thick dust layer on the windows. It makes the truck cab fill with warm color, deceptive, because it’s January and even in the South you can see your breath. Dave’s too cool for a coat, or too big for last year’s, maybe; his quaking body vibrates the canvas benchseat. Too little gas to turn the engine over, but you can flip the key towards you and power on the radio. Distraction.

You twist the knob slowly, one ear cocked towards the dash, pretending to know what you’re looking for. You settle on oldies, cough out a laugh at the chorus of “Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl”. You must have sounded too pleased with yourself, too smug in your purposefully terrible taste, because Dave’s blond head snaps around to glare through pointed glasses.

“What the hell, man? Really?”

You bop your head slightly, side to side, won’t give him the satisfaction of actually looking down. “This is my jam, yo.”

He grunts softly, folds his arms and tucks them tightly against his chest. You want to chuckle —it’s a pretty adorable gesture of childish frustration even as he's trying to be adult about it— but it would send the wrong message. You can see the point of his shoulder, his elbow sharp and hard, and knowing he is too skinny by half socks the humor out of it anyhow.

Song ends and another kicks in, Rod Stewart trying to be sexy. He doesn’t get through the first verse before Dave groans loudly and uncrosses his arms, violent-quick. You glance down past the edge of your shades. He’s got his hands crumpled into fists that smack the seat at the sides of his knees.

“What the hell are we doing here, Bro? We’ve been sitting freezing outside this shithole for so long I’m gonna need a herd of St. Bernards with high-pressure kegnecks if I want to thaw out before next week. Why’d we have to come all the way out to the Beltway, huh? Why we sitting in random-ass Joe Joe’s rustbucket with the gun rack and the goddamn Lone Star mudflaps?”

You’d known Joe Joe when you were kids, and you were with him on that field trip to the Alamo in 6th grade, but you hadn’t expected him to take such a hard turn for unironic Texas pride. No, not cool, but doesn’t matter. He asks few questions and does a lot of favors, a good friend. You hold yourself stiffly, even though your stomach is cramping like a bitch and your head is foggy. Soul-tired. You can’t let Dave know you’re feeling the pressure. Definitely can’t let him know his nagging’s actually getting to you. Instant game over.

“Am I even going to school tomorrow? Because at this rate, I’m going to get 2 minutes of sleep and look like I huffed glue with hobos under a bridge.” Kid just won’t stop running his mouth until you, both hands on the wheel, slowly rotate your upper body towards him. You tilt your chin up and raise your eyebrows by a hair; it’s a look he’s been getting since he first babbled in his highchair, shorthand for “You done, bro?” He is now, and his lips press into themselves and vanish.

“Listen, dude, I told you, best way to keep from losing your shit like that is to put a leash on it. Tug a little bit when it tries to leave the yard.” Dave’s left eyebrow hitches up; you can’t see them, but he’s rolling his eyes. Little bro is usually much more chill than this, going with the flow, but he’s cold and it’s the middle of the night and you can hear his stomach snarling from here. Fuck. He ain’t wrong about any of it. “Won’t be much longer.”

“Dude. Seriously, what the fuck is this? A stakeout? You pull some hugely weird shit sometimes, day to day conditions notwithstanding…”

“Damn, laying down some sick vocab!”

Dave’s fists tighten, cheeks getting redder. He’s Going There, no stopping him, and your own temper is rising. Everything fraying his composure presses down on you too, he just doesn’t know. And you are not in the fucking mood to be told.

“Never know when I’m gonna get my ass kicked or trip in a massive pile of pervy foam, but that’s just par for the 18 hole suckcourse we livin’ at. But sometimes you really step it up, max effort. Like not even coming home on my birthday? That was really special, man, real cool. But freezing in this fucking parking lot for like an hour, no reason other than you just like fucking with me makes that look like a trip to Disney.”

You’re both just staring now, and you can feel his anger hotter than a radiator. Resentment wafts off his face, blurring the air like summer sun on asphalt. And you open your mouth and spit right back, “Yeah, man, I know, huge asshole right here. But. You _hungry_ , player?”

Like a slap, shouting the unspeakable, the whole fucking deal compressed in a word. He recoils. You instantly regret it and feel lighter and fluid and it just rolls out of you. A radioactive containment leak, no stopping it. You don’t even want to.

“So, check it. It’s the 12th and I don’t get a check ‘til the 15th. You ate the last of the Eggos for dinner yesterday, so you know there’s no food in the house. I had a hundred bucks left after rent and the electric and all, but I still owed the doctor from the last time you went, so then it's just twenty-five. Then your backpack ripped and fourteen blocks is too far with all those books, so there that goes. Three days, dog, until we’re flush again and nothing to fucking eat.

“But there’s this chick Shelley who comes to flirt when I spin at the club and she’s a waitress here but only after 2 in mornin' and I called up Joe ‘cause we can’t walk here and I can't even find busfare in the couch. So here we are, bro, in a random dude’s shitty truck in the middle of the night, waiting for some girl, who could lose her damn job but is gonna feed us for nothing anyhow. There’s your why. ‘Cause you’re hungry and it’s the best hustle I got.”

Damn. Shuts him right the fuck up, just locks him down as it shifts the weight off you and onto him too. It’s the best strategy you ever thought of, laying it all out for him. And it’s the worst fucking thing you’ve ever said. Your whole mouth feels sticky and sour. Basically full-on ripped the curtain down between regular kid stuff and the shit grown-ass men have to shoulder. He is ten years old. Barely.

And you can see it, all over his face; he still loses a lot at cards. It’s clear how his forehead creases in the middle and his mouth is slack, you just blew his lobe. Reality KO’s childhood in one round. You can’t fucking believe yourself.

But Dave’s a smart kid, a _good_ one, he’ll handle it, you think— hope. Look at him, already working on patching up the shrapnel of your little truth bomb. Before he turns to focus on the brick wall through the windshield, you see him harden, not shivering anymore. You want to take it back, to apologize, but if you start to now, you will never, ever stop.

“Oh. Cool,” he says, toneless.

Probably once a week you feel it, this guilty nausea. You know you’re fucking up, failing him all the time. Failing him and you don’t know how to do any better. Never this bad before, though, never seen his spine so stiff and his face made of plaster. You haven't eaten in two days yourself, but you've never had less appetite in your life. There’s such a gulf between what Dave needs and what you’re giving him. Just sick inside.

You picture the waitress, Joe Joe, remember Mrs. Cieslewski across the hall from your first place. She showed you how to heat a bottle right, jostled Baby Dave to sleep when you couldn’t get him to. That guy, too, don’t know his name, who brought you buckets from his tap after the water got turned off in your first floor squat when Dave was a toddler. Every drop was critical, but you had to laugh when he reached in, started splashing and giggling wildly. Such a goddamn happy little kid.

You’ve been lucky to find folk to lean on, to have threads to pull, favors to call in. It’s kept you from outright killing the boy through stupidity or scarcity. They’re just kind people, mostly, a little sad for you, worrying about the kid. “Hey, it’s hard,” they say. But you’ve never met anybody that gets it. You don’t even. How do you be a— fuck, a parent? They’re your friends, neighbors, but just don’t live where you do, because you’re always so lost and roaming.

Sneak a glance to your right; Dave’s still arrow straight, eyes ahead. Perpetual fucking up aside, every time you see him, you feel fierce and raw. Like ball lightning. Proud and so, so scared. A sharp prick of loss? That pain’s new, a salty wound right in your chest. Maybe it’s the sting of failure deepening to honest-to-God terror. The plan, the way you decided to raise him, is to take him apart and let him put himself back together, stronger. So fucking stupid. Will he even survive all the ways your love is breaking him?

Gotta chill, man. Eyes front, keep it together. You’re both silent, all uneven breathing and exposed nerves, thinking hard. Attacking the charged air between you from your own corners.

Now that you’ve stopped being bastards at each other at top volume, what’s left is the cheesy announcer doing the station ID and starting the next shitty 60’s song. “Hang on Sloopy.” Jesus fuck.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Dave nod, slide towards you a few inches; he reaches for the volume knob and twists. “This track’s pretty sweet, man. Phat beat.”

Biting your style, irony like a ladder out of a hole. The only real tool you’ve given him. You want to grin and scream at the same time, split the difference with a smirk. And wrap your arm around him lightly, rest your hand on a bony upper arm. You are starving for contact, but restrain yourself. Just a little squeeze, you pull Dave against your side. It doesn’t make up for much, nowhere near enough, but he smiles anyhow, doing a barely-moving cool kid shoulder rock to the music. Tenderness ain’t cool, though, so it’s only a moment before he sasses you up, bright, friendly mockery on his face.

“So, you really scam on chicks that do the overnight at the Waffle House? Standards, dog.” You gotta laugh. Who is this kid, even?

Shelley appears in the restaurant door, she’s got a frilly apron on. Looks around the building’s front lot like she’s shoplifting. When she starts walking over, you crank the window down halfway and reply, “Check her out, she ain’t too bad. And keep your mouth shut ‘til you get your hashbrowns, aight?”

She’s pretty, dark-haired and slim. Though she must have dyed her hair recently, could have sworn it was blonde before. Smiling, she looks in and greets you, a little shyly. “Hey Strider. Glad you called. That your brother?”

“Sup, Sheila. Yeah, that’s Dave, coolest little man of all time.”

 _Shit._ You called her the wrong name, after all this bullshit you’re blowing it. She’ll get pissed… but she doesn’t, just a “hey” to Dave and invites you in, since her boss is gone. It’s a little weird. Weird like your arm around Dave’s shoulders.

The angle’s changed, like he’s taller, and as you turn to look at him everything brightens. The misty light pollution dials up a few notches, not blinding but still stinging your eyes. You’re confused, shades gone and you feel a wet warmth radiating out against your shirt, spreading quickly. You glance down, a short detour before looking at Dave, trying to suppress panic.

“Bro? What’s wrong?” His voice is tinny and far-away.

Fuck, it’s blood. From where? You curl your arm in —protective, needing comfort— grasping Dave to you.

He’s gone.

Your empty arms trigger the flood, your mind slammed hard against itself. As the stab wound rips and blooms over your sternum, pain bursting through you, you remember. This happened long ago, and he’s already been gone. Outside, everything twists and crumbles, the landscape is shifting and meteors stream down the sky. Jesus. All changing, and you’re completely alone.

You put your head down, touching the top of the steering wheel. The radio’s all crackling static. Close your eyes, try to breathe, but gasp and sputter instead. Hunched, starting to sob, you think about how long you’ve got left to wait.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in a series exploring Dreambubbles, though all parts work as stand-alones. I'm adding to it as pieces get finalized, no importance to the order as of yet.


End file.
